Posts by Russell Brown

Your assumption re: my empathy for those affected in your reply Russell is actually a great exemplar of you lacking empathy, by inexplicably levelling this at me for questioning you (and you alone) on your comments.

Hard to see how you felt like it was ok to assume I had no empathy towards schoolmates of victims affected by the attacks just because I thought you were inaccurate and loose with your choice of words.

I didn't say that. I pointed out that the hurt from this spreads wide.

But I honestly don't see why you needed to write a lengthy comment reiterating how hurt you are.

Let’s not be defensive about it, Christchurch does not ‘have these issues to itself’, I agree, but that sounds a bit like what-aboutism, rather than addressing how it is in Christchurch.

No, it is not. It’s saying we all have some shit to attend to.

Also, clearly it was not Christchurch that was attacked Russell. Muslims were attacked and bystanders that didn’t fit the target profile of the killer were not targeted.

On this, can I suggest you go back upthread and read what Emma has to say about this. There were people posting “fucking Christchurch” comments on social media with an hour of the attack and I don’t believe that was okay.

And finally, there were non-Muslim kids whose friends weren't at school on Monday. Because they'd been murdered. Show some empathy, for goodness sake.

But this is the part that really jumped out for me. It shows that David Farrar knows exactly what kind of place he's been running, and for what kind of people.

While there has been significant purging of content, much remains live, and many of those who have been or hosted prominent critics of Islam have yet to issue repudiations of their past statements. Whale Oil is still running “This is how New Zealand will turn into a muslim state”. Kiwiblog still hosts “A case for immediate cessation of all Muslim immigration”.

When I asked that site’s editor David Farrar whether he had contemplated deleting the post, he said that he had, but decided against it. “I think you do more harm when you don’t allow it to be debated,” he said. “Then you drive it to 4Chan [an extremist site Spark blocked on Friday] where people will see far worse.”

Both the comments on that story and the general debate immediately after the shooting were rife with abhorrent statements about Muslims. Farrar says this did give him pause, and he made the decision to temporarily turn on manual comment moderation. When asked why the slaughter of Muslims would drive his commenters toward Islamophobia, he replied “I think the problem is that people see [the massacre] as part of a global political battle, and they [commenters] haven’t shown enough empathy.”

So ... he tolerates racists, because if he didn't they'd just go to even more racist websites and that would be terrible. He's such a piece of shit, he really is.

Denying that there is a problem is no substitute for what needs to be done now- which is to stamp out these tinpot mussolinis.

I'm not for a moment denying there's a problem. And as you say, it goes way back – and the connections with the Act Party, via the likes of Trevor Loudon and ZAP, are interesting.

But talking to people there, people like Gerard Smyth, it does seem things have changed a bit – apart from anything else, it's a far more diverse place than the one I grew up in, especially since the earthquakes. And it clearly does not have these issues to itself. But I saw too many people on social media blaming Christchurch and apparently forgetting in their rage that it was Christchurch that was attacked.

Probably never. That's partly what annoyed me about him sounding off on Twitter – this is the music community attending to its own business and the very last thing it needs is to be inflicted with ignorant trolls.